August 10, 2009

Double-Whammy

Last week was not a good week for potty-training. Although I keep at it, it has been really tough to get PK to pee in the potty. She's gotten really good at holding it in while we're in the basement, even though she normally takes a fair bit of water while we're there. She wouldn't even pee on the floor. If she did that, I could at least tell her that this was wrong and could tell her that she should pee in the potty.

I thought that maybe the problem was that her Baby Bjorn potty was too uncomfortable for her little bum. So I bought a super-cushy Safety First pink potty. It's quite cute. Unfortunately, she thought that the seat cushion was a fun toy. Still I persisted. After a week of no progress, I finally saw a light at the end of the tunnel last Friday. After spending an hour running after her with a sippy cup, putting her down on the potty periodically, she could finally hold it in no more. Fortunately, when she relieved herself, it was in the potty. I'd say that the biggest challenge to potty-training has been keeping her ON the seat for long enough. She likes to run around the basement this way and that, and then sometimes plops down on the floor. I figure that if she's going to be sitting, she might as well sit on the potty. But that usually only lasts about 10 seconds before she gets distracted and runs around the room. But alas, this time, I had a yo-yo. She'd never seen a yo-yo before and thought that it was really cool. That distracted her long enough and relaxed her long enough to make her pee in the potty. Success at last!

The following day didn't go so well on the pee front, but I did get a poop in the potty. You win some, you lose some. On Sunday however, came my greatest triumph of all. First off, PK seemed relaxed enough to want to stay in the potty. I don't know if it was a change of heart, or just fatigue (it was pretty close to her morning nap time). One thing that helped as well was that I had a balloon lying around from her baby birthday party last Wednesday. She LOVES balloons, and was quite happy playing with this one.

After a while, I heard a grunt, and then caught a whiff of poop. It has certainly come a long way from the early days of odorless poop. She continued to sit on the potty after her poop, so I made no moves to get her off the potty. Why mess with a good thing?

When she finally DID get up, I was pleasantly surprised to see a puddle of pee along with the poop. It looked completely disgusting, but it was a real triumph! I clapped and congratulated her, and showed PK her masterpiece. I don't think she quite gets it yet. She tried to reach in for the poop again. Too funny. After that double-whammy, I decided to call it a day. It was close to her naptime anyway. Although this potty-training thing has its ups and downs, it's nice to see the ups sneak up on you after a week of downs.

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Welcome to PK Land!

PK Land is a blog about my experiences as a parent. It is a follow-up to my pregnancy blog, PK on the Way, which I wrote to document my pregnancy in the hopes of someday sharing it with my daughter. PK is short for "Potential Kid", which the hubby and I used to refer to the child that we might have in the future. We also referred to our unborn child as PK, as we didn't quite have a name picked out for her until she was born. Even though "PK" has an actual name (and her initials are not P.K.), I thought I'd keep up the anonymity (and save her future embarrassment) by continuing to use PK in this blog.